


your ocean refuses no river

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-03
Updated: 2006-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I gotta tell you, sweetheart, despite having Miss Cleo here as a sidekick, I'm not really a big believer in destiny."</p>
            </blockquote>





	your ocean refuses no river

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to amberlynne and mousapelli for handholding, and to luzdeestrellas for betaing above and beyond. All remaining errors are mine.

The vision dissipates, and Sam wonders if shooting himself in the face would hurt less.

"You gonna puke?" Dean asks. Sam shakes his head, but that just makes it worse, makes it a lie.

When he's done turning himself inside out, bile slick and yellow on the pavement, Dean's got one hand on Sam's shoulder, the other on the back of Sam's neck, and his voice is warm in Sam's ear.

"All right, Sammy, it's okay," he murmurs, and Sam wonders if he even knows he's saying it, if he even needs to say it, because he's said it all Sam's life, and Sam hears it even when Dean's not there--heard it on long, lonely nights right after he'd left, pretending his roommate's phlegmy breathing was Dean's, keeping Sam breathing, too.

Dean hands him a bottle of water, lukewarm, been sitting in the car all day, and he drinks half of it in one long gulp, trying to wash away the sour yellow taste of the future he's just seen.

Dean settles next to him, the two of them on the shoulder of a deserted county road somewhere in Indiana, or possibly Illinois, bright winter sunshine making it look warmer than it actually is. Dean's breath wreathes around them, coffee-scented, and Sam inhales, the air of home, or as close to it as either of them ever gets, anyway.

"Well?" Dean asks finally. He's never liked silences he doesn't initiate; letting them lengthen is the best way to break him, make him break them, and Sam's become good at it over the years, holding still, keeping the words inside his mouth, ready to tumble out as soon as--as long as--Dean offers something first.

"It happens at sunset," Sam says. "A woman, drowning. Being held under the water in a...pond or something. I don't know why." He shakes his head again, carefully, but there's nothing left inside of him to come up, except the water, and his stomach settles, though the threat is still present, like a bomb waiting to be triggered.

"We shag ass, we can be, well, we can be lots of places by sunset." Dean stands, holds out a hand, pulls Sam to his feet. "Any clues as to where we should be, Karnak?"

He closes his eyes, sees dark hair like tentacles in green water, eyes wide and dead as she sinks to the bottom. The last orange rays of the sun reflecting off a larger body of water in the distance--which stretches to the horizon, frozen, but isn't the ocean.

Sam misses the ocean.

"North," he says. "Lake Michigan."

Dean nods, doesn't ask how he knows, just accepts that he does. It's weird, but Sam's glad, because he can't say how he knows, just that he does, and they've both learned not to ask too many questions, to stifle the _why_ and the _how_ in favor of the _where_ and the _when_. There was a time Sam would have mocked Dean for it, would have called him Dad's perfect little soldier, just following orders, and _can't you think for yourself for once?_, but those days are gone, ashes on the wind like Dad's body.

They get back into the car and Dean hands him the bottle of Excedrin, extra strength, and not nearly enough to put his post-vision headache down for the count, but in twenty minutes or so, they'll take the edge off the pain, at least. It lets Dean feel like he's doing something to help, even though they both know there's nothing to be done at all.

*

Dean peppers the ghost with rock salt while Sam pulls the girl from the freezing water. It's another fine rendition of Winchesters to the rescue, except that as soon as he gets her to dry land, he's hit with another vision, and in it she's drowning again, as if they didn't just stop it from happening.

"What the _fuck_?" he manages.

Dean sinks to a crouch in front of him, grabs his shoulders, and Sam knows he should bat him away, tell him to look after the drowning woman first (_suck it up, Sammy; be a man_), but he's still shaking and he feels like the top of his head's going to come off if he so much as _breathes_ the wrong way.

"Sam?" Dean's voice has that panicked edge it gets when Sam's in trouble, the one that vibrates through Sam as if he's a tuning fork, and the high C has been struck true, and requires an answering _Dean_ he can't quite manage yet. And again, softer this time, "Sam?" and a strong hand cupping his face.

He forces his eyes open. "I'm okay." It's a lie, and not a very good one, and they both know it--hell, even the drowning woman probably knows it, and she's never even met him before--but it allows Dean to turn his attention to her.

"You okay?" he asks her, rougher than he normally would be with someone they've just rescued, but Sam can barely twist his face into a reproach.

She nods, shivering, and Dean pulls his leather jacket off, wraps it around her, ignoring the cold himself. She lifts her long, water-heavy hair--ice is forming in it, glittering in the last light of the sunset--and ties it into some kind of complicated knot at the back of her neck. Sam's never been able to figure out how women do that--Jess used to be able to hold her hair up with strategically placed pencils--and he watches in fascination, the pain in his head forgotten for a brief moment.

She frowns, then, reaches out and takes Dean's hand, turns it over so she can look at the palm, then traces the lifeline with one waterlogged finger.

Dean pulls his hand away and shoots Sam a glance. Sam shrugs as delicately as he can, but regrets it anyway.

"I'm Dean, and this is my brother, Sam." Sam's heard Dean make this introduction a thousand times if he's heard it once, but some part of him still feels like there's a punchline to be had there, though he doubts this woman would get the joke. Hell, he doesn't get it himself most days, but he's starting to think it's on him.

"Alma," she says. "Alma Reselosa." She looks at Sam, her eyes narrowed and dark, and grabs at his hand, looking at it the same way she looked at Dean's. She frowns. "I can't get a read off you at all," she says accusingly.

"Why don't we do this someplace that isn't freezing?" Dean says. He looks at Sam, doesn't need to say, _Someplace away from the water, and the ghosts that want to drown us in it._

Dean gets the blankets out of the trunk while Sam works on not puking again, and then they're driving, headlights bright against the fast encroaching darkness. Night doesn't so much fall in the winter as it pounces, eager to leach any lingering sunlight or warmth away.

Alma directs them to a small white house on the edge of the small shore town. There's a discreet sign hanging in the yard that says, _Miss Alma, Psychic: Futures Read &amp; Fortunes Told_ in curly, girly script.

She leads them upstairs, shows Sam to a tiny, pink bathroom that smells of lavender, where he changes out of his soaked jeans and socks. When he's done, he follows the dim hallway back to the kitchen, where Alma, wearing a bulky sweater, her wet hair tied back with a scarf now, sits drinking coffee with Dean.

Dean offers him two more Excedrin, the last of the bottle, and he makes a note to add that to his list for the next supply run. He swallows the pills and chases them with coffee.

"So, are you the real deal?" Dean asks. "Or is this the usual tall, dark stranger shuck and jive?"

"Dean." It's not even a warning, but Dean rolls his eyes and shuts up, willing for once to let Sam take the lead, at least in this. "Can you tell us what happened?"

She glances at Dean, but talks to Sam. "I go out to the lake to meditate. It helps clear my head." Dean sucks his teeth in disdain, but Sam nods. He and Jess used to drive down to the ocean in the middle of the night during finals week, after they'd studied so long and so hard he thought his brains would dribble out his ears. "I...see things. The past usually, but the future, too, sometimes. It's especially strong if I touch the person."

Sam looks around the little kitchen, cheery gingham curtains on the windows, cinnamon candle burning on the stove, normality yet again proving an illusion, so easily stripped away.

"Have you always been able to do it, or did it start a little over eighteen months ago?"

She starts, sits back with a jerk. "How did you--"

He goes through the whole thing--fire in the nursery, mother on the ceiling, demon on the prowl--the pain in his head making it easier to separate himself from it, giving him a distance that allows him to feel like someone else is speaking. Dean stares into his coffee mug, tense and hating every minute Sam spends telling their life story to a stranger. Alma goes pale and nods at the relevant parts.

"My parents both died in the fire," she says, shoving up the sleeve of her sweater to show off a long pale patch of skin on her forearm. "The firemen got me out, before I was burned too badly. My aunt raised me." She shakes her head. "So you say there are other people...like us?"

"Yeah. We don't know how many, but usually my visions are connected to them. I think that's why your...powers, for lack of a better word, don't work on me," he finishes.

"But that doesn't explain him." She nods her chin at Dean. Dean opens his mouth but Sam kicks him under the table before he can say anything. "It's not that I didn't see anything, it's that there's nothing to see." She shakes her head, frustrated. "It's just a big jumble of...possibilities."

"Isn't that what the future is?" Dean asks. "Because I gotta tell you, sweetheart, despite having Miss Cleo here as a sidekick," he jerks his head at Sam, who kicks him again, but he keeps going this time, "I'm not really a big believer in destiny. I mean, Sammy's visions are pretty accurate, except for the way they're totally not, because we changed the outcome. And it's not the first time."

"Can we leave the discussion of predestination versus free will for another time?" Sam rubs his forehead, pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to ease the pressure there. "We have to find out about the ghost, because it's coming back; it's going to try to drown you again. Do you know who it was?"

"My aunt. She drowned on the lake two years ago."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I--" She looks down at her hands. "I wanted to ask her about," she gestures vaguely at her head, "everything."

"So you thought it was a good idea to summon her ghost?" Dean says, shaking his head in disgust or disdain or some combination of the two, with anger coming up close behind. Dean's always had a fierce temper, but it's been simmering close to the surface since Dad died, and Sam's never sure when it's going to blow, or even what's going to set it off, though people fucking around with the natural order of things is pretty much top of the list. "Jesus."

"Look, I didn't think--"

"Obviously."

"--it would work. It was just a stupid spell. You know, as a kid, I never believed in any of this crap. Aunt Alicia was a fraud, as far as I know. She used to do readings for the tourists, and she had a few locals who were regulars, but it was all bullshit. But she taught me everything, and when I started to...see things, I needed help."

Sam can see the muscle jumping in Dean's jaw as he clenches it tight, but before he lets loose with the angry tirade, Sam says, "I understand. It's hard. It's just...necromancy is a really bad idea."

"Yeah, I get that now," she answers, rubbing at the bruises on her neck.

"What spell did you use?" Dean asks. Sam looks at him sharply. "Was there blood involved?"

"Yeah, I--"

"Whose blood? Did it require a sacrifice or--"

"My blood." She shows them her left index finger, Hello, Kitty band-aid wrapped around the tip. "Not much--a few drops--and some herbs and stuff, sprinkled in the water where she died."

"Any incantation?" Dean's voice is hard, relentless. "Did you invoke any gods or other spirits?"

"Dean," Sam snaps, and this time it _is_ a warning. _Take it easy_ and _you better not even be_ thinking _about trying it_ all rolled into one handy syllable. He turns to Alma. "Can you tell us where she's buried?"

Alma looks from Sam to Dean and back again. "In the family plot. Pine Hill Cemetery is just outside of town, about a mile east of here. Why?"

He tries to be gentle. "We need to salt and burn her bones to make the spirit go away."

"I don't, I don't understand. I just wanted to ask her a few questions."

"This ghost--it's not your aunt, okay?" Dean says, and there's nothing gentle about it. "You brought it back and it's not happy. It wants to make you suffer, or take you with it, or who the hell knows what? But these things always want something, and when you call 'em up with blood, more blood is usually what they want."

"Dean."

Dean stands, waves him off. "I'll go to the cemetery, take care of Aunt Alicia. You stay here with Alma and make sure the ghost doesn't get what it wants." He pulls his jacket on, scrubs a hand across his eyes. He looks tired; he always looks tired now, like--and Sam can't stop the thought, though it makes his stomach lurch unpleasantly--death warmed over. He doesn't find it funny, though he thinks Dean might. Dean is still talking to Alma, getting the location of the grave.

"There's a small reflecting pool in the center of the cemetery," she says, "and the grave is about two rows from the south end of the water. The headstone is rose marble, got a big angel carved on it. She picked it out herself." Alma shakes her head. "I always thought it was kind of morbid, to be so excited about a headstone. Told her I wanted to be cremated."

"Yeah, cremation's the way to go," Dean says absently, obviously already moving ahead to planning the night's work, but Sam can taste ashes in his mouth, smell burning flesh--Jess, Dad, hell, probably even Mom, though it's not a conscious memory. He forces himself not to shudder. "Saves a lot of trouble in the end."

Sam takes a sip from his mug to moisten his suddenly dry mouth, but it will take more than coffee to get rid of those memories. "Do you have any salt?" he asks. Alma nods. "Okay, get that out. And excuse us for a second, okay?" She nods again, goes to get the salt while he follows Dean down the narrow staircase. "Dean." A plea this time, a prayer, if he believed in prayer. Though he's seen the results of various rituals first-hand, he's still not sure he does.

"Just salt the doors and windows, and wait. It shouldn't take long. Routine salt and burn. The digging will take a while, 'specially with all this fucking snow, but..."

He grabs Dean's shoulder, tries to capture and hold his gaze. "Be careful, man."

Dean nods once, firmly, as good a promise as Sam's going to get, before shrugging him off with a, "Dude, don't be such a girl."

Sam laughs, and then Dean is gone.

*

Alma follows Sam around as he pours salt along the front and back thresholds, and each of the window ledges. It's familiar, comforting, reminds him of other nights, other hunts, of him and Dean waiting for Dad to come home. It reminds him of how much he hates being left behind.

"So, this is, like, your job?" Alma asks.

He hesitates a beat before he says, "Yeah. Well, except that it doesn't pay for shit." He tips the cardboard canister, pours a solid line of salt on the windowsill. "It's kind of the family business."

She nods. "Yeah, I know how that goes."

"Is that what you wanted?"

She shrugs. "I...don't know. Maybe. When I was little, it was fun, like being part of a secret society or something. The shiny wore off when I learned it was mostly sleight of hand and salesmanship--no magic in the real world. Little did I know, huh?" She huffs a soft laugh. "I went off to school, and didn't think much about the future, beyond the next party and the next cute guy. I always knew I'd have the shop to come back to. Like, it didn't matter if I failed chemistry or dropped Russian literature. I'd always be able to come back here and work for my aunt." They finish the windows in the shop and head upstairs.

"Then Aunt Alicia died, and I didn't have a choice. I couldn't afford to stay in school without the income from the shop, but I didn't have any income from it unless I was the one here running it. So." Another shrug. "The future became my business. If you had told me two years ago that I'd be here, and that I'd actually be _seeing_ the future," she shakes her head, "I'd have called you crazy. But it is what it is."

"Does it hurt, when you--"

"It did at first. Headaches and nausea. I should have bought stock in Advil. But as I learned to use it," she shakes her head, "it got easier. Less painful. It still hurts if I touch someone unexpectedly, but I try not to do that anymore."

"Even people you know?"

She cocks her head, as if she has to think about it. "Sometimes. It's--I can never tell."

"How did you...learn to control it?" He finishes salting the last window, hands her the nearly empty canister.

She leads him back to the kitchen, pours the last of the coffee into their mugs, and starts another pot. "Meditation, mostly. Yoga. Breathing techniques. It helps that people expect psychics to be weird, you know? So I tried all sorts of things before I found something that worked. And I'm still learning. I thought Aunt Alicia could help." She takes a long sip of coffee, bends her left leg so her foot is on the chair, folds the right one flat beneath it, and wraps an arm around her knee. "So, you only see deaths?" He nods. "That sucks."

He gives a brief, mirthless laugh. "Like you wouldn't believe."

"But you saved me." She smiles, and the pleasure on her face makes him smile in return.

"That we did." He doesn't mention the people they haven't been in time to save.

From there, they slide into a discussion of philosophy, free will, and predestination, and he loses track of time, measured vaguely in cups of coffee and stale butter cookies she produces from a tin on the top of her fridge. It reminds Sam of the three am conversations he used to have with his first roommate in college, who'd been majoring in philosophy, and spent most of his time stoned off his ass--conversations about life and death, the geometry of time, the liquid nature of sin. The kind of conversations he and Dean had had all too rarely as teenagers, because by the time he was old enough to have them, he'd decided he valued normal over everything Dean could teach him.

Since Jess died, though, they've occasionally fallen back into it, usually when one or the other of them has lost just enough blood or drunk just enough beer to allow them to pretend in the morning that nothing happened. As much as he'd like to blame Dean for that, he knows he's no better at acknowledging some of the things that lie between them, darker and scarier and more needful than the creatures they hunt.

"Foreknowledge isn't the same thing as predestination," he's saying, and as if he's willed it to happen, the edges of his vision start to blur. The vision hits like lightning--a hard, fast flash of white light, and he sees Dean, at the cemetery, ghost holding him face down in a pool of icy water. Dean fights it, but the ghost is stronger, and his struggles begin to subside, limbs twitching instead of hitting out, and then ceasing to move altogether.

"Dean," he roars, but Dean is dead, Dean is gone, Dean can't hear him.

He's on his hands and knees on the yellow linoleum floor of Alma's kitchen when he comes back to himself.

She's hovering over him, looking scared, and her voice shakes when she says, "Sam? What's wrong?"

He shakes off her concern, concentrating on one thing and one thing only. "It's Dean," he says, voice hoarse, as if he's been screaming for days. "The ghost. We have to go."

*

Sam folds himself into the passenger seat of Alma's beat up old Ford Escort, holding himself still and trying to will the car to go faster, though it rattles alarmingly when the needle on the speedometer slips past sixty. He knows it'll be quicker with her driving--she knows the way, and he can barely keep his eyes open, the dull white glare of the streetlights sinking like knives into his brain--but he hates not being in control, hates not knowing where they're going, that they're not getting there faster.

He stares out the window at the pavement, black asphalt rolling beneath the tires familiar as a favorite song--it helps allay the constant pulse of fear beating under his skin, the pulse that sounds like _Dean, Dean, Dean,_ if he listens closely.

Dean is perfectly capable of digging up a grave and burning a set of bones by himself. Sam knows this. But he also knows what he saw, that he has to be there to change it, or--He shakes his head, swallows down the bile that rises at the motion, and forces his mind away from the thought. He has his .45, which is useless against ghosts (and he probably should have grabbed his shotgun before Dean took off earlier, but what's done is done and can't be changed now), and he has a box of wood matches and a bottle of lighter fluid. He has enough salt to make things interesting. He is not letting this girl's fucking Aunt Alicia--or anything else--take Dean away from him now.

It's not a long ride, though it feels like forever, and then they're there, the Impala parked neatly in the spot closest to the grass. Sam's out of the car before it even comes to a complete stop, gritting his teeth against the pain in his head and the sharpness of the cold air in his lungs.

He hesitates for a second, wondering if he should try to jimmy open the Impala's trunk, get a shotgun and some salt rounds, but it would take too long, and Dean might hold it against him if he scratched the paint. He waits long enough for Alma to point him in the right direction, and then he runs off, driven by fear, slowed down by the snow crunching underfoot.

He can see the reflection of Dean's flashlight off the snow before he gets there, and he's starting to think maybe he's panicking needlessly--of course, Dean is fine, and will probably call him a pussy for rushing out here to check up on him.

But when he gets to the grave, everything is the way it was in his vision--the grave is open, a blank rectangle of negative space in the darkness, black dirt churned with white snow to make a mess, the ghost holding Dean under the water in the reflecting pool, thin coating of ice on the surface broken by Dean's head and shoulders as he struggles against it.

He breaks away for a moment, flailing, and raises his head to gulp at the cold night air, eyes wide in his pale face, and Sam yells, "Dean!"

"Sam!" Dean manages before Aunt Alicia shoves his head back under the water, but Dean's fighting hard now, re-energized by the knowledge that Sam is there.

Sam stumbles towards his brother, slipping in the snow, scattering salt as he tries to pour it into his hand to toss at the ghost. He almost goes down, bangs his foot against something hard and black on the ground, and realizes it's Dean's shotgun. He swoops down and grabs it, ignoring the chill of snow on his bare fingers, and comes up firing.

The ghost dissipates and Dean rises from the water, gasping. He coughs up a few mouthfuls of water and gets to his knees before the ghost returns, and Sam shoots it full of rock salt again.

"Let's burn this bitch, Sammy," Dean grinds out, still breathing heavily, shaking with the cold.

Sam turns back to the grave, where Alma is standing, arms wrapped around herself to ward off the cold and the fear.

The ghost appears in front of her, grabs the fringed ends of her scarf and _pulls_. Alma shrieks, batting at it ineffectually as it tries to strangle her with the length of bright pink wool.

Sam tosses the shotgun to Dean, who catches it and reloads it with shells from his jacket pocket--Sam hopes they're still dry--and shoots the ghost again.

Sam dumps salt into the grave, even though he's pretty sure Dean already has, hands steady, because he refuses to give in to the fear that's buzzing like angry bees just below conscious thought. He can smell lighter fluid, but he pulls the bottle from his other pocket and squirts more down into the grave. Then he strikes a match, inhales the familiar wood-and-sulphur scent, and tosses it in, repeats the process three more times, as Dean comes to stand next to him, icicles forming in his hair, glittering in the moonlight like jewels.

The bones catch, and smoke rises from the grave in graceful curls. Aunt Alicia's ghost fades like the clouds of condensation from their warm breath in the cold air.

Sam grabs Dean before he can stop himself, but he pulls up just short of hugging him. Instead, he runs a hand--shaky now that the crisis is past--over Dean's wet hair, and Dean smacks it away.

"Dude, what the hell?" Dean snaps, though his voice is still scratchy and there are bruises rising black on his throat and the back of his neck. "I'm fine, Sam." He looks Sam up and down, lips pursed, head cocked thoughtfully. "Another vision?"

"Yeah, man. You were--" Sam can't bring himself to say it.

"Yeah, well, I--" He stops for a second, and Sam holds his breath. "I'm not," he finishes, as if that's what he'd meant to say all along, and Sam lets the illusion stand for now.

He turns to Alma, who is still hugging herself, teeth chattering and eyes wide. He puts a hand on her arm. "You okay?"

"I, I think so," she answers. "I--Thank you. Again." Her chin is wobbly, and Sam hopes to God she's not going to cry, because Dean is useless with crying women, and he's too wrung out with worry about Dean to really be any good at comforting anyone else right now. She takes a deep, audible breath, and visibly pulls herself together. Sam gives her a gentle, thankful smile.

*

While Dean showers, Alma makes up the bed in the spare room, and Sam pulls down the sleeping bag from the top of her closet, unrolls it on the floor next to the bed. She yawns and apologizes, but he waves her away.

"You've had a rough day. You should get some sleep."

She nods, twirls a lock of hair around her finger absently. "Thanks again, Sam." And she disappears into her bedroom, closing the door behind her with a quiet click.

Sam takes off his boots and changes into a clean t-shirt and his sole pair of sweats, the pain in his head ground down to a dull ache. He lies down on the bed (his feet overhang the end, but he's used to that) and doesn't relax until he hears the water shut off.

When he pushes the bathroom door open after a perfunctory knock, Dean's investigating the medicine cabinet.

"Dude, she doesn't have any good stuff in here."

"Dean! Have some manners, man."

"You're the one who just walked in on me in the bathroom." He pulls out a bottle of Advil. "You need some?"

Sam holds out his hand and Dean taps three pills into it. He fills a glass with water and hands that to Sam, as well. Sam tosses back the pills, but when he holds the glass out to Dean, Dean's no longer looking at him.

Dean's staring at himself in the steam-fogged mirror, fingering the marks around his neck, unreadable look in his eyes.

"You okay?" Sam reaches out a hand, brushes his own fingers over the bruises. Dean's skin is warm and moist to the touch.

Dean jerks back, startled. "I've been showering on my own since I was four, Sam. I think I managed okay without your help."

"You nearly drowned, Dean. Sorry if the combination of you and water is making me a little nervous right now."

The look on Dean's face softens for an instant, but then his mouth curves into his usual cocky grin. "Thanks for the concern, Grandma."

Sam huffs in exasperation, because it's expected, but he can't really work up any annoyance at the moment--the fear from his vision is still too close, too real, to shake off. It makes him blurt out the words, though he knows he probably shouldn't, can guess exactly how Dean will react.

"You could have died tonight, Dean. I _watched_ you die."

"Not for the first time, either, so I don't know what's got your panties in a wad. The important part is that I didn't. "

And now the exasperation is real. "_Dean_."

Dean smacks his cheek lightly, affectionately. "Hey, hey, it's all right. I'm all right. Me and death, we're like _this_." He crosses his fingers, smirking, though he won't meet Sam's eyes. "And dead men don't have futures to see." Sam sucks in a breath, hating how easy it is for Dean to make jokes like that, how sick it makes Sam feel. "You heard Alma. I got nothing but possibilities now--it's all wide open." He shakes his head, rubs a towel over his wet hair, making it stick up wildly. "We make our own destiny, Sammy. Not even your freak-boy visions change that." Sam huffs again, and turns to walk away, but then Dean says, "You came through in the clutch, man. Good job."

He feels warm, pleased, at that, and turns back to Dean, smiling. "So, how did Aunt Alicia get the drop on you, anyway?"

Dean shrugs, sheepish. "I took a break after all that digging," Sam raises his eyebrows, "hey, that snow is fucking _heavy_, man. And she came up from behind me, whacked me in the head with my own flashlight. She was pretty spry for an old girl, I'll give her that."

Sam laughs at that, anxiety, relief, and amusement all mixed up in the sound. He reaches out again, puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, and for once, Dean doesn't shrug him off immediately; instead, he leans into the touch for just a moment, and Sam doesn't let it linger. "Well, I'm glad you're all right."

Dean doesn't answer right away, and Sam feels his stomach clench again, but then Dean says, "Me, too, Sammy. Me, too."

*

In the morning, Alma makes them eggs for breakfast, the first home-cooked meal they've had since they left Bobby's, and they wolf it down eagerly.

"We'll be in touch," Sam tells her, giving her their cell numbers. "Call us if you need anything, or if anything happens."

"I will," she says. She gives him a quick, tight hug, and squeezes Dean's hand, and Sam remembers what she'd said about unexpected touches. That she can't read them is probably a relief.

While the car is warming up, Sam says, "We really ought to have a second set of keys, man. I could have gotten my shotgun from the trunk last night if I'd had keys."

Dean looks over at him, surprised, and Sam thinks maybe he's stepped over some invisible line--Dean's drawn so many of them over the years, it's like playing Chinese jump rope with a blindfold on. But then Dean nods. "Yeah, okay." He pulls out of the driveway, waves to Alma, and looks over at Sam. "Where to, Karnak?"

"West," he answers without hesitation, though he has no idea what they'll find on the way, and it really doesn't matter, anyway.

The future is theirs to write, and Sam wants to see the ocean again.

end

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sheila Chandra's "Ever So Lonely/Eyes/Ocean."


End file.
